Affordable Housing Institute : US

[Continued from the previous Part 1 and Part 2.]
 
So far, in deconstructing the lengthy Atlantic article about deconcentrating poverty by demolishing public housing and giving residents economic mobility, an article whose premises I find somewhere between flawed and offensive, although they are unstated, indirect, and hard-to-pin-down. 
 

Cough up that theory now, there’s a good […]

 [Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
 
Yesterday we started digging into an 8,500 word Atlantic article that never quite has the courage of its convictions.  Echoing the Duke of Wellington’s lament about the railways –
 
“[Railroads will] only encourage the common people to move about needlessly.”
The Duke of Wellington, 1835
 

Imagine having to sit among them
 
– it wants […]

 
“[Railroads will] only encourage the common people to move about needlessly.”
The Duke of Wellington, 1835
 

 
There is much to admire in the Iron Duke, but when it came to the Iron Horse, no matter how dismissive, he was imperiously, dismissively, magisterially wrong.  Railways created mobility and opportunity, and the common people took advantage of it to […]

 
“Lieutenant,” said Zondi, “with respect, there is white man’s rubbish, and there is black man’s rubbish – and the poorer the black man, the bigger is the difference.  A boiler boy, boss, is a very poor man indeed.”
– James McClure, The Song Dog, 1991, page 211
 
Few countries show greater contrasts than South Africa, and with […]

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
 
Yesterday’s little adventure in my slum tourism looked at the first form of Sao Paulo’s slum upgrading: the Cingapura program of demolish-and-build-new walkup flats. 
 

A light switch, an ash tray, and a saint: the Brazilian office
 
But people don’t like flats as much as houses.  Walkup flats are incompatible with home-based businesses, […]